This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
China Shock 2.0. The coastal tides are retreating before our eyes, but still a large chunk of the general population believes China only makes cheap crap.
For some reason I'm confident the chinese robots are better than the american ones.
This was at CES, it's basically one massive advertisement for trendy bs. Most of the american firms represented were there for AI and wearable tech, since the push for consumer robotics is mostly a dying fad in the US and AI is the hot new thing.
Doesn't seem like the Chinese ones are as advanced as Atlas from Boston Dynamics. Check this fella out!
Which is now owned by Hyundai.
Which is South Korean
It's our Chinese against their Chinese!
Unitree, even judging from dance/kung fu demos, but also for price and availability seems far ahead. 10k humanoid shipments in 2025. Agibot about the same volume. They both have open development environments, afaiu. Atlas $160k vapourware future price, or especially mechahitler controlled $250k price on closed systems will be hard sales compared to expected Chinese/Unitree progress.
Sure, price is cheaper on smaller robots with little practical function.
You're right that in demos, atlas focuses on practical tasks, and it does have great hands. I have seen the Chinese bots sort items from a conveyor belt and fold clothes. Given the price gap, I think China could add good hands and be competitive, but as an open platform, its similar to early PCs, and customers could dream about adding hands. It's a huge deal to ship stuff for sale to anyone. The big lead china has is in the motor miniaturization, it seems to me.
comparisons that make Atlas look better than the video included in my response. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3NkPU9nSr
Wasn't it been controlled by a person in the audience? We need a "RoboCop" style demonstration for us to know what autonomous looks like.
or choreographed. Definitely not a task demo, although they have made some.
Don't Chinese firms make >55% of everything?
China really shouldn't be working so hard to make minimum labor equal in every country, it is the only thing giving them an advantage over the USA
it is the only thing giving them an advantage over the USA
That’s really not true at all anymore. China is an absolute manufacturing powerhouse. Almost all of the industry that used to be the USA’s strength in the ‘50s is China’s strength now.
They haven’t been the cheapest labor anymore for a while now and they don’t need to be.
Don’t get me wrong, the USA has other, newer strengths now — tech and design, among others. But they do appear to be throwing them away and ceding to others — especially China — as hard and fast as they can.
On the other hand, humanoid shape for robots seems like an extreme waste of technical complexity and cost, so in my opinion this particular article is mostly showing up how China is also beating the USA at being faddish and dumb following tech fashion.
Japan used to make subpar shit in the 70s too before they up their quality the decades after.
